Set somewhere in the deserts of Inner Asia during the time of Ghengis Khan, this novel follows Tarazi, a wandering scholar whose lack of respect (both towards rulers and the Muslim faith and judicial system) got him exiled from his homeland. Although once an adherent of the alchemists, he became disillusioned with their goals and turned to the study of “testudology” instead, for the transformation of turtles into humans, he thinks, is a more promising avenue of study and one with concrete practical applications as a source of much-needed labor.

On one of his stops, Tarazi is called in to get rid of a giant turtle whose appearance caused great consternation -- the people fear it is a sign of impending war, while others believe that such turtles are people who had been transformed as a result of their misdeeds.

This turtle, as it turns out, was indeed once a human -- a misfortunate man named Bessas. After several months of treatment (which primarily seem to consist of infusions of human blood to dilute his animal substance), Tarazi and his student are able to gradually restore Bessas to human form and during his reconvalescence he tells his story to the two men.

Bessas’ story, which takes up the middle third of the book, involves his journey as a young magistrate who has been sent to a village where a storm broke off one side of a giant hill of salt, revealing a man chained to the mountain. A man who, we gradually discover, has likely been hanging there for centuries. Eagles fly about the mountain, stealing pieces of the corpse’s liver, and the dead man holds a pipe in his hand (a pipe that once held fire, and perhaps hashish), as evidence of his transgression. Although he is never named, a reader familiar with classical mythology will have no difficulty identifying him: the man can only be Prometheus, who according to legend was chained to a mountain in the Caucasus. Bessas’ transformation begins during his stay in this village, but it seems to be more a recidivism, a return to the animal nature that runs through his family line, than it is due to any crime of his own.

The novel is not tightly plotted, and occasionally feels a bit rambling, but the pleasure is really in the countless details and digressions which the author makes so memorable. We get to read a delightful treatise by Tarazi that is basically an exuberent hymn to laziness, and another about waiting for an audience with the ruler/Lord, not because one actually wants an audience, but because that is what one is expected to do. There are moments that are reminescent of Kafka, although Pulatov, ultimately, is more carnivalesque and less hermetic. There is the city, made up, apparently, of circular roads which only natives know how to navigate; foreigners wishing to visit require a guide to lead them through the tunnels that link the roads. These tunnels were originally constructed for the city’s defense during war, but turned into a way to fill the khan’s coffers with the money of tourists. There is a surely rather phallic obsession with Bessas’ tail, as well as some (I suspect deliberate) humor derived from the fact that the word for “turtle” is of feminine gender in German (as it is in the original Russian), so feminine pronouns are constantly used when referring to Bessas-as-turtle.

In spite of the fantastical elements, the novel is really about science -- about both the promise of progress and the failure of human reason to master nature. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's engaging and playful but with a slightly melancholic philosophical streak that invites further reflection. It's readable even without a detailed understanding of the Soviet context or the culture of Uzbekistan, although there are certainly bits that take on a somewhat different significance when read in that light (the handling of the Prometheus episode, for example, seems particularly ironic).